Abstract
Moving photonics onto silicon has been a long-held goal, and while there have been many successes in developing passive silicon photonic devices, an active laser that is truly CMOS-industry compatible remains elusive. In this thesis, it is described a novel ion-beam induced strain technique that allows to engineering high tensile strains in group-IV semiconductor membranes. Conventional focused ion beam (FIB) microscopes (Ga liquid metal ion source FIB and Xenon Plasma FIB) have been used to implant ~10^15 ions cm^-2 in silicon (Si) single-crystal 35 nm membranes. The implanted ions cause shrinkage of the irradiated region, giving rise to a pulling force at the edges of the neighbouring non-implanted region, in a similar fashion to the tightening of a drum skin. Since the experiments use low-energy implants, only the top half of the membrane is amorphised and contracts, whilst the bottom half remains crystalline. The overall result is a remarkable amplification effect causing record high tensile strains (3.1% biaxial and 8.5% uniaxial tensile strain) at the central unexposed region, all of which were measured by micro-Raman spectroscopy and correlated to electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analyses. This new method has the potential to transform the silicon (and especially germanium, Ge) electronics/photonics industry via allowing far higher electron mobility in silicon transistors for much better speed and heat dissipation and by producing CMOS-compatible direct gap materials for lasers and other photonic devices. In addition, considering the potential of this newly developed technique to produce active silicon or germanium lasing devices, a facility to manufacture liquid metal alloy ion sources (LMAIS) was built in order to implant Si or Ge ions whilst straining membranes of its respective composition. This self-implantation is necessary to produce intrinsic laser without the introduction of defects, hence maintaining high probability and gain levels during stimulated emission of radiation.